THE
GOOD
LAWYER
Memory loss
actually serves us well, at least to a point. If
we stored forever every single experience, no
matter how trivial (assuming, for a moment, we
had storage capacity enough to do this), we
might lose our ability to frame a coherent
life story, overwhelmed as we would be with
the details piling up from every page,
paragraph, and sentence of our pasts. The
very fragility of our memories helps shape how
we see ourselves.
What
are you likely to remember from the thousands of
days that made up your career? Only a
small percentage of your experiences as a lawyer
are likely to be deeply encoded. They
are likely to be those intense experiences where
your work aligned best with your values, where
your strengths led to a workplace triumph, or
where you shared a deep emotional connection
with a client or a colleague.
From our memories we construct the story of our
careers. The
encoded fragments of our past experience,
distorted and degraded over time, are woven
together to form the core of our personal
identity as a lawyer. These
stories—these career autobiographies—are more
about meanings than they are about facts. Our
understanding of ourselves is an act of
construction; it is a “subjective and
embellished telling of the past.” We
make the history of our career; it has no
existence in the physical universe.
Our stories anchor us. They
allow us to savor the past, fully experience the
present, and
anticipate the future. Without
an ability to travel in time our life would be,
in the words of psychologist and neuroscientist
Daniel L. Schecter, “psychologically barren—the
equivalent of a bleak Siberian landscape.”
This has been a book, in no small part,
about how you can become the kind of lawyer
who can someday look back with satisfaction on
your legal career. It
is not a guide to being a successful lawyer,
if success is measured by win-loss records,
fame, or financial reward. It
also offers no promises of finding greater
happiness in your career, though that might be
a welcome side-effect from following some of
its suggestions.
At career’s end, you will ask yourself,
“Was I a good lawyer?” Your
memories will provide the answer. Your
good work will create the memories.
Seeking Quality in the
Practice of Law
by DOUGLAS O. LINDER and
NANCY LEVIT (Oxford
University Press, 2013?)
The Good Lawyer
About
The Good Lawyer
Preface
Introductory
Note
The
Good Lawyer is Courageous
The
Good Lawyer is Empathetic
The
Good Lawyer Has a Passion for Justice
The
Good Lawyer Values Others in the Legal
Community
The
Good Lawyer Uses Both Intuition and
Deliberative Thinking
The
Good Lawyer Thinks realistically About the
Future
The
Good Lawyer Serves the True Interests of
Clients
The
Good Lawyer Has Ample Willpower
The
Good Lawyer is Persuasive
Quotes
Random
Facts
The
Happy Lawyer
Excerpt from Chapter
10:
Seeking Quality